Product highlights from Storage Decisions conferenceSeptember 28, 2006
-- <B>September 28, 2006</B>—The product news from this week's Storage Decisions conference in New York was software-heavy, with a new suite for intelligent switching from Incipient, a new release from Microsoft's storage arm, and a bevy of partnerships, including a push by server virtualization vendor VMware into the data backup market.

FilesX adds true CDPSeptember 27, 2006
-- <B>September 27, 2006</B>—At last week's Storage World Conference in Boston, FilesX introduced the 3.0 version of XpressRestore, which now features "true" continuous data protection (CDP) as a complement to frequent or scheduled snapshots. The company claims recovery time in minutes, especially for Microsoft Exchange, Internet servers, and databases. The software can be custom-tuned by application.

HP launches SMB storage lineSeptember 21, 2006
-- <B>September 21, 2006</B>—For most of us, the term "all-in-one" invokes the image of a device that performs some combination of printing, imaging, and fax functions. You probably have one in your home office. But Hewlett-Packard is out to change what small and medium-sized business (SMB) users perceive as an all-in-one device to include network storage with this week's launch of HP's StorageWorks All-in-One (AiO) line of storage systems.

Copan spotlights persistent dataSeptember 20, 2006
-- <B>September 20, 2006</B>—Copan Systems, which made its initial mark by introducing the industry to the MAID acronym, this week launched another acronym—PDSA, or Persistent Data Storage Architecture—as well as an "ecosystem" of partners to shine more light on the storage requirements for persistent data.

EMC software automates ILMSeptember 19, 2006
-- <B>September 19, 2006</B>—EMC this week announced a new software suite that helps end users discover, classify, and manage unstructured file data. The new product, dubbed Infoscape, is a combination of technologies obtained through a number of acquisitions and, according to the company, heralds the next generation of its information lifecycle management (ILM) software. EMC is also offering a related consulting service to help customers plan and implement the software.

Increased CDP awareness doesn't equal salesSeptember 17, 2006
-- <B>September 18, 2006</B>—The entrance of large vendors such as EMC, Hewlett-Packarad, IBM, Microsoft, and Symantec into the continuous data protection (CDP) market has raised end users' awareness of the technology, according to a new report on the CDP market by International Data Corp. (IDC). The report states that 61% of the survey respondents say they understand CDP, compared to 25% in a previous survey conducted about ten months earlier.

Happy Birthday, disk drive!September 15, 2006
-- <B>September 15, 2006</B>—Fifty years ago this week, IBM introduced the first hard disk drive as part of its Random Access Method of Accounting and Control (RAMAC) system. As the catchy name indicated, it was the first device to use random access to data (although it would take another 50 years for disk drives to start replacing sequential-access tape drives).

Storage software revenues up 8.6%September 15, 2006
-- <B>September 15, 2006</B>—According to figures released this week by International Data Corp. (IDC), the overall storage software market grew 8.6% in the second quarter of this year versus the same period last year, but three of the top five vendors suffered revenue drops.

Sun, IBM tackle tape encryptionSeptember 14, 2006
-- <B>September 14, 2006</B>—Sun Microsystems and IBM each launched new technologies for data encryption on tape drives and key management this week as a direct response to the ongoing threat of data loss and identity theft plaguing big companies and consumers across the country.

EqualLogic, StoneFly upgrade IP SANsSeptember 13, 2006
-- <B>September 13, 2006</B>—Adoption of iSCSI-based IP SANs is picking up, as are iSCSI-related product announcements. For example, EqualLogic this week introduced a new series of disk arrays that feature high-performance Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk drives and tiered storage functions. Also this week, StoneFly rolled out a new iSCSI SAN with support for 10Gbps Ethernet and clustering software for high availability.

Putting a FAIS on intelligent switchesSeptember 12, 2006
-- <B>September 12, 2006</B>—It has been several years since storage networking vendors began their push for putting advanced data services and storage management functions on fabric switches. So-called "intelligent switches" have since emerged with the ability to facilitate storage virtualization, provisioning, and certain levels of data migration and management.

Strategic governance issues for e-mail archivingSeptember 11, 2006
-- <B>September 11, 2006</B>—E-mail archiving is a relatively new area and as yet "best practice" appears to be simply a general recognition that e-mail should in fact be archived, and that formal policies on retention, retrieval, security, and immutability should be in place.

Who's number two in disk arrays?September 8, 2006
-- <B>September 8, 2006</B>—According to estimates released this week by Gartner Inc., EMC held on to its number-one position in the external controller-based disk array market in the second quarter of this year—by a long shot. EMC had a 23.8% market share based on revenues, according to Gartner, and increased its revenues by 4.3% versus the second quarter of 2005. (In Gartner's calculations, EMC's revenues do not include revenues from its major resellers, Dell and Fujitsu Siemens.)

Cisco boosts branch-office performanceSeptember 5, 2006
-- <B>September 5, 2006</B>—Cisco introduced new additions to its branch-office product family today, including an integrated hardware and software solution that promises to aid in the consolidation of branch-office server, storage, and backup systems and boost the performance of TCP-based applications across WANs.

Sun beefs up services and supportSeptember 1, 2006
-- <B>September 1, 2006</B>—In an effort to keep customer confusion and concern to a minimum, Sun Microsystems has been slow and deliberate on its path toward integrating the technology, personnel, and services gained from its acquisition of Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek).

Storage technologies meet studio needsSeptember 1, 2006
-- Studios can benefit from relatively new technologies such as SATA and SAS disk drives, as well as network interfaces such as 4Gbps Fibre Channel and InfiniBand.

Pillar adds management softwareSeptember 1, 2006
-- Pillar Data Systems is adding a new set of management features to its software suite to provide better management for its &ldquo;all-in-one&rdquo; SAN and NAS tiered storage systems, including support for virtual tape, a new continuous data protection (CDP) option, and secure write-once, read-many (WORM) technology.

What is CDP?September 1, 2006
-- Q: How is CDP (continuous data protection) different from traditional host-based replication software?

IBM to buy ECM vendorSeptember 1, 2006
-- IBM is making a bid for a piece of the enterprise content management (ECM) pie with the acquisition of FileNet, a publicly held company based in Costa Mesa, CA, for approximately $1.

WAFS reins in remote office backupSeptember 1, 2006
-- Wide area file services (WAFS) technology is evolving. Once known simply for speeding up file access at remote locations and improving bandwidth utilization over WANs, WAFS products are now being wrapped with applications and tools such as data de-duplication and virtualization to become the foundation for a new approach to moving, protecting, and sharing data over distances.

VFX requires high speed and capacitySeptember 1, 2006
-- Studios such as Pixar, The Orphanage, DNA, and Tweak Films leveraged a variety of new storage technologies to meet the high-end requirements of recent feature films and animation projects.

HP ships hybrid arraySeptember 1, 2006
-- Hewlett-Packard was expected to re-double its efforts in the small to medium-sized business (SMB) storage market this month with shipments of a new line of hybrid arrays that promise block-based (SAN) and file-based (NAS) storage with integrated data protection in one box.

Brocade to acquire McDataSeptember 1, 2006
-- Brocade made a bold move last month and narrowed the playing field in the storage networking market when the company announced its plans to acquire chief rival McData.

Big Bro goes for 73% market shareSeptember 1, 2006
-- Brocade&rsquo;s announcement last month that it will acquire archenemy McData (for an eyebrow-raising $713 million) didn&rsquo;t come as much of a surprise (except to those expecting Cisco to beat Brocade to the punch), but it did create a lot of questions.

Business BriefsSeptember 1, 2006
-- Ibrix&rsquo;s Fusion software is now available through the EMC Select Program. The program provides EMC customers with single-source access to products for building end-to-end ILM solutions.

Case studies: Users embrace D2DSeptember 1, 2006
-- When disk-to-disk (D2D) backup first became part of the storage industry lexicon, a portion of intrepid users volunteered to put the first wave of disk-based backup products through its paces.

IBM brings CDP to SOHOsSeptember 1, 2006
-- Continuous data protection (CDP) technology was arguably the most hyped storage software innovation of 2005, but once reality set in, CDP quickly went from being a must-have product to something enterprise users expect to be offered as a standard feature of any backup/recovery product.

Getting value from the SMI-S standardSeptember 1, 2006
-- Common management of multi-vendor environments and agent-less management are two of the benefits of the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S).

IBM rounds out 4Gbps arraysSeptember 1, 2006
-- IBM completed fitting its midrange storage systems with 4Gbps Fibre Channel connectivity last month with the launch of a new entry-level array and a round of hardware and software upgrades for its System Storage DS4000 family of disk arrays.